


Memory

by Ninkasa



Category: Fire and Hemlock
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ninkasa/pseuds/Ninkasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you remmeber that day at Middleton Fair?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

"Do you remember that day at Middleton Fair?"

Polly was very carefully not looking at him. She stared down at her hands, her hair shielding her face from his gaze.

He had been in the process of tying his shoes and paused in the act of raising his foot. Tom shifted around to finish putting his shoe on and put his feet back on the carpet, giving her a considering look as he did so.

They had talked a bit of the things that had happened, slowly getting to know each other in this new light. It was at moments as if they had always known one another. And then moments like this when both were trying desperately to be delicate.

She sat across the room in the large chair he used for reading with her legs were folded beneath her, hands folded properly and her head bowed with her hair hanging around her face like a curtain.

He wondered briefly as to which part of Middleton Fair she was referring, then suspected she meant in general. There were still parts of the time they had spent together that he didn't remember, but for the most part, it had all come back.

Tom sighed. "Yes. Knights in shining armor and so forth."

"Oh." Polly pushed her hair out of her eyes then. "I had thought. . .you never mentioned it."

Tom peered at her and came over to sit on the arm of the chair she was occupying. "Neither did you."

She smiled then. "Well, if you didn't remember it, I certainly wasn't going to jog your memory."

She looked about to say more, but closed her mouth with a snap and Tom sighed in response.

He said, after a long moment of silence in which he looked at her very carefully to gauge exactly what he should say, "I could have handled it better than I did."

Polly looked back at him with an equally considering look, and then said, "I could have behaved better than I did."

Tom smiled and reached out to push her hair from her face. Polly's eyes closed, reminding him somewhat irresistibly of a cat that was being stroked.

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about it," he said, after watching her in silence for another moment.

Polly opened her eyes, bright and penetrating gaze fixing on him. "If we don't, we might never be able to move past it."

And by "we", she meant "she", because he had bigger issues than being embarrassed by one day of behavior. He had five years of it. Tom hesitated for a moment. "What would you have done if I had said I didn't remember it?"

She shrugged and then smiled. "I would have jogged your memory." She paused. "You don't want to talk about it?"

Tom sighed. "You want to talk about it and a conversation requires two people, so. . .there you have it."

Polly frowned. "That's not an answer." She hesitated. "Don't you want to?"

"Why do you?"

"I asked you first."

Tom took his glasses off and wiped at an imaginary smudge. "It was a long time ago and things are different now. There's no reason to drag up something that's just painful for both of us." He stopped then and let go of her.

He had been trying desperately hard not to feel guilty over the things that were going on now. It was difficult enough to feel guilty for loving her when she was nineteen and it was alright. Dragging up everything that had occurred when she had been fifteen and younger went a long way towards undermining that sense of security.

And if he mentioned this to her, it would only upset her. She already got upset when a stranger – some store clerk or waitress – looked at them suspiciously now, there was no point in reminding her of things from years ago.

He put his glasses back on to find her staring determinedly at him.

Tom sighed.

"Alright. Where do you want to start?"


End file.
